


Dead Hour

by reconditarmonia



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-07
Updated: 2009-05-07
Packaged: 2017-10-26 05:49:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/279429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reconditarmonia/pseuds/reconditarmonia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That Elsinore is haunted is nothing new.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Hour

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gileonnen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gileonnen/gifts).



The platform is a place for strange sights. They have always known this; it was not the ghost itself that was unusual, but that it came in a shape they knew, that of a man but recently dead; not unusual to see a half-transparent form lurking in a corner or wandering below, whispering and gibbering sounds that might be passed off as the wind in the trees or the hoot of an owl, but the king that was and is the question of these wars, marching in the open, that was worth asking Horatio the scholar about. (Horatio might have known other faces--the lady who threw herself from her bedroom window three centuries ago when her husband was killed in battle in Germany, the prince killed on his father's throne when rebellion overwhelmed the castle and to fight longer was futile--but they did not recognize them, nor think to ask.)

And now everything is changed. Now, the watch is kept by King Fortinbras's professional soldiers instead of by the subjects of the land, men who know better than to believe in the ghosts they catch in the corner of their eye, and better than to tell anyone else if belief takes them by surprise. Those are the old Denmark. The fratricide, the incestuous queen, the chamberlain listening at doors, they are but shades for the gallery of shades that walk the platform, to be tolerated but paid no mind.

(Horatio knows. When he works up the courage to tell Hamlet's story, maybe he will stop seeing him.)


End file.
